>Joining the Energy Imbalance Market is not quite the same as being subject to ISO control. The ISO does operate the market. But they still can't tell SMUD to shut off power in rolling outages like they can (and do) PG&E; that decision is still up to SMUD. It does give SMUD more incentive to conserve energy and sell surplus into the ISO's market, which seems to have grown so big that there's really no other market available in the West. And as I read that press release (and stuff at the EIM web site) SMUD didn't join by itself; it joined as part of a Balancing Authority of Northern California that it was already a member of - it was the BANC that joined the ISO's market.

Found most of that stuff too. The ISO thing is a product of two things: the FPA's pressures on the untilities to become intertied, which dates to the 1960s, and deregulation of the 1990s. The intertie thing "looked good on paper" but was a key factor in the 1965 Northeast backout. The ISO is a product of the privately owned utilities fobbing off the decision making re brown-outs onto the Guvmint, and I don't blame them a bit for doing so. One of the big impetuses for deregulation was the special treatment municipal/govmint agencies received with regard to maintaining service levels and acces to sources like the USBR. By joining the Balancing Authority, I wouldn't be suprised to find that ISO or ISO-like conditions also apply.